Understanding God's Ways

Understanding God’s Ways

Series: Where’s God When You Need Him

August 20, 2006

Last week, I gave you a list of things that don’t make any sense and really can’t be understood. Today I want to add to that list. For example…

1. Why can’t women put on mascara with their mouths closed?

2. Why don’t you ever see the headline “Psychic Wins Lottery”?

3. Why is ‘abbreviated’ such a long word?

5. Why is it that doctors call what they do ‘practice’ ?

6. Why is the man who invests all your money called a ‘broker’?

7. Why is the third hand on the watch called a ‘second hand’?

8. Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called ‘rush hour’?

9. Why isn’t there a special name for the tops of your feet?

10. Why is it called ‘tourist season’, but we can’t shoot at them?

11. Why isn’t ‘phonetic’ spelled the way it sounds?

12. Why are there flotation devices in the seats of planes instead of

parachutes?

13. Why didn’t Noah swat those 2 mosquitoes?

14. Why are they called ‘apart-ments’ when they’re all stuck together?

15. If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport ‘the terminal’?

Those are all humorous things we’ll probably never understand. But there are some less humorous, more serious things in this life that know one seems to have a good answer for either...

Questions like…

1. Why are some people healed of cancer after much prayer, while other people die of cancer after much prayer?

2. Why are some people born with perfect health, while others are

born with physical deformities and diseases?

3. Why do some people attempt suicide and survive, while others

attempt to squeeze every moment out of every minute of life and die?

After 9-11, I heard a story of a man, who through a series of events missed his flight.

Later he found out that the flight he was scheduled to be on, was crashed into one of the twin towers. For some unknown reason, He was miraculously spared. We hear about that and think, “Wow! God was watching out for him”. Then I heard another story about a man who through a series of miraculous events made it onto a flight. As he and his wife were waving a quick goodbye to each other, they were amazed at how God had orchestrated the timing perfectly, allowing him to make the flight. His wife later wrote an article about how his plane had crashed and he was killed. So who was God really looking out for? Was God working in one man’s life and not another?

Those are situations that don’t seem to make any sense. We can’t understand them, and after scratching our heads for awhile, we’re even tempted to wonder if God’s really out there after all. As we’ve been asking the question, “Where’s God when you need Him?” the past few weeks, we’ve been attempting to draw close to God and get to know Him better. We’ve talked about how you can experience God’s glory and hear his voice…and this morning we’re going to talk about “Understanding His Ways”…As an object lesson, we’re going to go back to the life of Moses. Last week we found him being confronted by God from a burning bush. God told Him to go into Egypt and free His people. And not to worry, because the “I AM”… the “God Who Makes Things Happen”, “Yahweh”, would go with him.

Fast-forward a few months, and now Moses is sitting in his tent… moping! He’s complaining about the people and frustrated at God, even though God had done exactly what He said He would do. Through a series of incredible plagues and natural disasters He’d humbled the mightiest nation in the world. Reluctantly Pharoah finally said, “Uncle!” and freed God’s people from their slavery. In the ‘greatest escape’ ever engineered, Moses had led millions of Jews out of Egypt, and now they were poised to take the land God had promised them and their forefathers for centuries.

But before that happened, God wanted Moses to come up on Mt. Sinai and receive the ground rules for living a prosperous life in the promised land. So Moses goes up the mountain and is gone for 40 days. During that time, the Israelites decided to ‘chuck’ the God who’d delivered them, and worship a golden calf instead. When Moses returns & discovers this, in a fit of righteous rage, He throws down the sacred stone tablets, smashing them into a million pieces! Now, he sits in his private tent at the foot of Mt. Sinai. depressed, discouraged and alone. He’d moved it outside the camp in order to be with God, but not so far that he couldn’t keep an eye on the mischievous Israelites. Many times, sitting there all alone, he sensed the presence of God close to him…and it was during one of those times that He just let it all hang out! He poured out his frustrations to God. (Have you ever come to that point? If you haven’t, you need to! Honesty is good for any relationship, esp. your relationship with God!) ****READ Ex.33:12-33